(OHSU: Portland, Oregon) -- A recent study, “Telehealth and Healthcare Informatics,” by William Hersh, M.D., professor and chair of the department of medical informatics and clinical epidemiology at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), says a 40 percent hike in information technology (IT) workforce will be needed to move U.S. health care toward a paperless system that is able to control costs and reduce medical errors.

If the U.S. health care system moves toward wider adoption of advanced IT systems to control health care costs, reduce medical errors, and improve patient care, it will need at least 40,000 additional health IT professionals—or almost 40 percent more than U.S. hospitals now are estimated to employ.

“The need for IT professionals in health information technology (HIT) settings is large and will increase as more advanced systems are implemented,” says Hersh. “If our data represent a correct sampling of the entire United States, then the current IT workforce is about 108,390 FTE [full-time equivalents]. However, if the U.S. HIT agenda is fulfilled and hospitals move to higher levels of adoption, an additional 40,784 FTE will be required.”

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